New Curriculum Plans on Track in N.C. City

Teachers and administrators at the Mount Airy City Schools are busily preparing to roll out the new Common Core/Essential Standards curriculum set to debut next year — a curriculum that will place more emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving skills and focus less on rote memorization.

The new curriculum is designed to refocus education in the state to better prepare children to live in a global, technology-based economy. It comes on the heels of North Carolina’s application to opt out of the No Child Left Behind Act, a much-maligned federal initiative.

Although the benchmarks designed to measure the success of the new educational model are still in the formative stages, administrators in the city’s school system say one thing is clear: The new curriculum will be much more rigorous and will force children to think critically, analyze information and use complex problem-solving strategies to reach a conclusion.